News Story

Perihelion explain The Mandate's RTS Battle Orchestrator

Space opera The Mandate is beyond the Kickstarter nebula and finally on track for production. Perihelion Entertainment has revealed more about their so-called Battle Orchestrator and what they intend.

Real-time strategies have gotten rather stale, they feel, despite fancy visuals and destructibility. Battle Orchestrator designed to abolish the "tactical click-fest".

We can pause the flow of combat during our real-time space skirmishes, but there is another way to enjoy The Mandate by feeling a bit more like an Admiral.

"Remember that while you start out as the captain of a small frigate, you will eventually control a flotilla and later a full battle squadron as well as squadrons of light craft," posted Perihelion. "How do we plan on making it possible to coordinate multiple ships and boarding operations in real-time?"

Their answer is the Battle Orchestrator, although its name isn't final.

"...we believe that the RTS genre as a whole has stood still for some time. Sure physics and destructible terrain, bigger battles and AAA graphics add “something”, but after a while it gets repetitive."

"We believe game developers in general misunderstand or ignore the important distinction between strategy and tactics, often sacrificing the former for the latter. The end result? A tactical click-fest that needs lots of micro managing. Suffice to say, Sun Tzu would not be amused!" they continued.

The Battle Orchestrator will "allow you to easily switch between the 3D space battle view and a stylized planning mode where you can plan out movement curves for your ships and visualize these. You may assign specific stances to ships (defensive, aggressive etc) as well as set rules of engagement for usage of fighters, heavy weapons etc."

"In addition you may “preview” the future position of your ships to sync up the movement of your fleets. Our goal is to make it easy to plan and modify orders for your AI escort ships which leaves you more time to manually control your flagship." The studio posted some concept artworks of the Battle Orchestrator.

Perihelion will be releasing a prototype video of the Battle Orchestrator in the next few weeks, which will accompany another Kickstarter update for The Mandate. See the latest update for more on their progress.